Friday, 20 March 2009

The long awaited Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 has now been made officially available to general public,

With long awaited features included such as:InPrivate BrowsingBrowse the web without saving your history with Internet Explorer 8's InPrivate Browsing. Now you can shop for that special gift with confidence knowing your family won't accidentally find out or use a shared computer without leaving a trace

Web SlicesKeep up with changes to the sites you care about most. Add a Web Slice and you won't have to go back to the same website again and again for updates on news, stock quotes, online auctions, weather, or even sports scores.

AcceleratorsAccelerators let you map directions, translate words, email your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks.

Friday, 13 March 2009

We noticed a while ago that emails were suddenly disappearing without trace, no NDR being genereated. The email just seems to disappear.

There are multiple ways to resolve this issue but I'll explain my method which will hopefully point most people in the right direction.

Firstly you need to find out exactly what the issue is, in my case we tracked the message in ESM and found the message was received by the server but then never delivered with the message; "SMTP: Advanced Queue Failed to Deliver Message in ESM"

You should enable message tracking, by right clicking the mail server in ESM and checking the tracking box on the general properties page.

Review the log file to find the exact event id from the exchange server.

Tuesday, 10 March 2009

I recently came accross a client who recieved this message when they tried to use a sharepoint (V3) list:

"Your client does not support opening this list with Windows Explorer. "

Obviously this isnt a very helpful message but after a short while of searching through events and web pages I found the following Microsoft Article which helped to resolve the issue. It is caused by a long URL or List name exceeding 100 characters. Microsoft have noted the problem and now released a patch for download so you can clear this problem.

This is something that used to drive me crazy and probably still would had I not simply taken a few minutes to think a little bit about my options.

The scenario was simple Windows 7 RC from Microsoft's website as an ISO installing onto an Acer Aspire one with NO CD DRIVE!

So I had to go down the USB root, well the answer is actually really simple,

Firstly make sure your external drive is formatted as NTFS then secondly go into computer management (Right click My Computer and Click Manage) and right click your disk. You then see an option (Set as Active) this will set the partition as Active as it states (Which also means bootable).

Copy your ISO onto the drive and boot, hoorah!

I think this is limited to Vista though...not sure anyone willing to try this on XP please let me know how this goes..

I know everyone's scenario's when seeing this message are pretty varied but I found a nice way to fix this within an hour providing you have a similar setup.

In my particular case I had two servers an SBS 2000 (oh dear I hear you cry) and a Standard Server 2003 running SP1. The 2K3 machine was rebooted and upon reboot we were presented with the above error.

So to fix try the following:

1. Reboot the 2K3 server into "Directory Services Restore Mode" then logon to the machine locally, in my case I didnt know the restore password (results of taking on machines from other support companies.)

-If this is the case go onto the second server, right click "my computer" and select manage, within the new window, right click the "Computer Management" header and then click connect to another computer, you can then connect to the server you can't log into and reset the local admin password.

2. So first things first now your into the server you need to check the database files, go to start, run, and type "cmd" to open a command shell. The type the following:ntdsutil files info
You should see similar the below:
Drive Information:

You need to make sure that these files exist and the directory is there before you continue.

3. You can now do an integrity check by typing the following:ntdsutil files integrity if you get an error here then continue, otherwise try a reboot and it should fix the issue.

4. Next check is a semantic check, do this using the following command:ntdsutil "sem d a" go
If this fails however try the following:ntdsutil "sem d a" "go f"

5. Try a defragment:
5a - Type 'ntdsutil'
5b - Type 'compact to "c:\TMP"'If defragmentation succeeds without errors, follow the Ntdsutil.exe on-screen instructions. Delete all the log files in the log directory by typing the following command:
del drive C:\ pathToLogFiles \*.log
Copy the new Ntds.dit file over the old Ntds.dit file in the current Active Directory database path that you noted in step 2.

Note You do not have delete the Edb.chk file.
Restart the computer normally.

I personally still had issues at this point, with the server refusing to access these files with JET errors. So from that point had to do the following:

In the right-pane, double-click ProductType. Type ServerNT in the Value data box, and then click OK.
This will make the server a member server, reboot and log on locally to continue.

7. Once booted, you now have to simply run dcpromo from the command line and make a test fresh domain. I used testdomain.deleteme again once this process is complete, reboot.

8. You have now got your self a domain controller again, simply run dcpromo again to uninstall AD services from this new DC and once again reboot.

9. Finally if this applies, use ADSI edit to rip out the domain controller from Active Directory on the other server and then run dcpromo to join the server back to the existing domain.

Doing it this way, I lost no data and all security permissions were retained within the folder structure - My method was constructed using a variety of the below links and other sources, it may or may not apply to your circumstance but your answer will be in there somewhere if not.

Did I solve your problem? Buy me a virtual beer by clicking on a Google ad :). Thanks!

Support this site:

Search This Blog

About Me

I work at a company in Milford, Derbyshire called Axess Systems as a Enterprise Cloud Architect. I also run a number of my own firms, with my most busy being Delta Web Solutions inbetween all of that, I get involved in some part-time work through my Hypnosis studies and I'm an intra-day stock trader!
Feel free to contact me if you have any technical queries, challenges or where you need help with Technology!
I'm also a keen hobby photographer; you can check out some of my random work on Flickr.
Qualifications:
MCP
MCTS: Windows Mobile 5
MCTS: Windows Vista
MCITP: Enterprise Desktop Support
MCTS: Small Business Server 2008
SCE: Siemens Certified Engineer
Siemens Certified Sales Associate
Diploma Complete Mind Therapy 2015
Citrix Specialist Sales Certified 2016
NetApp Certified Sales Professional 2016

I guess the main reason for this posting is more informative than to help people solve this but I was astounded when I did more digging into...

Disclaimer

All content written in this blog is personal and should only be used and/or enjoyed by persons of a technical nature whom feel confident of applying the suggestions given. I don't claim that every solution on this site will solve your problem and in no way have most posts been verified by anyone other than myself, as the reader considering implementing these solutions, you agree to transfer liability to yourself applying these suggestions. Kris Haynes and/or any of the companies currently employing, owned or otherwise should not be held liable for any content distributed.